


Falling

by everstar81



Category: Bucky Barnes - Fandom, Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:22:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everstar81/pseuds/everstar81
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a work in progress</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work in progress

Falling.  
He was just falling.  
Stark, painful gleaming white of the pure snow was slipping away to murky gray to all consuming black.  
And he knew.  
He knew.  
There at the bottom of the darkness what waited.  
Not death. No death would had been welcome, a kind mercy.  
But he would not be given that peace.  
He would fall and it would begin.  
His disintegration.  
Starting with a arm and ending with the rendering of his very soul.  
At first he heard only Stevie scream.  
But like the roaring sound of the fall, a choirs slowly filled his ears.  
Her whisper of his name to a wail.  
The sound of countless voices crying out in horror, in pain, in surprise begging...  
“Your work has been a gift to mankind...”  
Grasping for air, Bucky sat up on the fold away bed drenched in sweat. He took deep galloping breaths , forcing self control but as his watery blue eyes found the shiny steel fist on his lap he began to tremble. “The fist of Hydra.” Spoke a thick, high voice in his head.


	2. Chapter 2

He hated the between time, the empty spaces.  
The waiting.  
Unfortunately for him, it seemed that his latest target was a lazy fuck, barely ever moving out of the middle class bungle in the upper middle class part of Rio. He seemed to have a host of ever revolving women doing almost everything for him. Being a pimp was just another reason for the bullet that waited to explode the creeps skull.  
The waiting meant time to think and worst, remember.  
He had tried almost everything to forget.  
Things in his head just weren't right, and he didn't know if it would ever be. A faceless girl with bright red lips and victory curls dancing too close as “That Old Black Magic” was performed in a hall filled with other faceless people washing into seeing his face at The Smithsonian to watching Stevie fall…  
Cold sweat beaded Bucky’s back and he chugged a bottle of water to rid the feeling of sick that crept up in his throat.  
‘This was taking too long’, he thought. The bottle bounced off the wall opposite the window he watched from. It was too hot, too stagnate, he wanted to be back in Brooklyn or the army.  
He wanted...he wanted his head to stop feeling like its being cleaved in two. What he wanted didn’t exist anymore, he told himself.  
He couldn’t find his way home because there was no home left.  
“Execute target.” a commanding voice said in his head “Finish the mission.”  
These women were just whores, no one would miss them, collateral damage. He was the Winter Soldier, it would be a clean in and out job, fifteen minutes tops.  
“Finish the mission”  
Penny was a sweet girl, her older brother had been a friend of Sergeant Barnes in school. He took a bullet to the neck and bled out before the boys of the 107th could catch him from his fall. After training camp, Barnes attended a dance with her, she drank a little too much and he drove her home in his dads car. She almost vomited in it, prompting Barnes to pull over near her apartment. She ran into the alley and was sick. He helped her back to the car. As he started the engine, she cupped his crotch.  
“Whooo kiddo.” he laughed removing her hand.  
“Com’on Buck, I...I wanna thank you. It’s what all the girls are doin’”  
“I’m not one of those guys Penny. You don’t have to thank me…”  
But Penny wasn’t listening. She drove head first into Sergeant Barnes lap.  
Carefully he grab her shoulder and sat her up. “You’re almost home.”  
When they pulled up to her apartment building, her brother was waiting.  
“Christ, Penelope.” he said taking his unsteady sibling. “Look Jimmy, sorry…”  
“Don’t mention it, Mikey. Just get her straight before your Pops gets off his shift.”  
“Yeah, yeah.” the long dead Michael said with a sigh. “Still, thanks for being a stand up pal. That’s why I asked you to take her. I knew…”  
“You knew?” Bucky cried at the fading memory. “What am I now, uh? What am I now pal?”  
Doubling over Bucky tangled his fingers in his long dirty hair trying to keep his head from breaking into two and was sick.


	3. Chapter 3

“Where do you go?”  
Her soft, slightly accented voice asked breaking the fog like a light.  
“To Pluto and Mars, doll.” he replied kissing her forehead.  
Cuddled up on Birdie’s couch Bucky smiled. Genuinely smiled.  
Things were far less bad around her. Even things like watching a Cagney movie he had missed while “out on ice”; like she called it.  
Maybe that’s why he could be ok with her. She could joke about things like that and it was actually funny to him.  
Like a bad dream he couldn’t shake, Bucky knew Stevie was trailing him. As much as he needed to be caught, he needed to run. Just not ready yet, he told himself.  
He lied. He was aware enough to know part of the reason was that everything was different now. Not just things between him and Stevie, but the world. Now Bucky needed the safety.  
There seemed to be at least a new discovery of the Winter Soldier behind some fall, war, killing, plotting or policy change in the news lately. Some people blamed Hydra some blamed him. He blamed him.  
But truth be told Bucky wasn’t ready for for that scab to be picked off. Stevie couldn’t prove safety from himself.  
Being with Birdie wouldn't heal it, but maybe she saw enough of the pre Winter Soldier Bucky in him to help him find that part of him too. Maybe she was the bridge between that old Bucky and this new world that he needed. Whatever it was, he breathed in her lavender scented hair and watched Cagney reach the top of the world.

It had been a few days since he had showed up at the door of her new place in the wee hours of the night. For hours, he had sat on the rooftop of the paint store across from her apartment building thinking, considering. When he finally brought himself to her doorway, he felt like a sinner on the threshold of a alter.  
He barely made a sound against the hollow door, frowning at how easily it could be kicked in. His hearing told him soft, small feet neared it on the other side and there was a slight scraping noise. His training drew his eyes to the peep hole that quickly darkened then lit faintly with light again.  
"Good girl." he said under his breath as a chain lock, dead bolt then a button knob lock were undone.  
She never asked where he had been or done, just joked that she'd smelled better road kill in Texas as she tossed him a pile of fuzziest towels Bucky had ever seen or touched.  
Mud, grime, sweat and what felt like ten layers of skin sloshed away leaving swirling patterns of greyish brown around the trap. It took two washed before his hair felt anywhere close to clean and all the pretty smelling products in Birdie's shower seemed too delicate for him but he used the cocoa butter soap just the same.  
When he opened the bathroom door the smell of toast and eggs crept in. Like the steam from the scalding shower, he poured out smiling and quickly found Birdie standing in the middle of her tiny kitchen coffee cup in hand.  
Coffee wasn't anything new to Bucky. His first cup had been with his Pa one cold Brooklyn morning as they waited for the midwife to come out of his parents room. The new baby, his lone brother Nathan, cried softly inside and Bucky himself was 9.  
In the army, coffee had been even more common. It warmed, it cheered, it kept you on edge in the darkest hours of waiting, with could even be mixed into something a little more lending courage, pity, comfort and escape. He had liked coffee. A lot. And now, it seemed like the thing was everywhere, every corner and sometimes even at each corner with one or two in the middle. Like the society he found himself thrusted into, Birdie almost always had a cup of the thing in her hand.  
"You didn't have to." he said with a slow crooked smile.  
Birdie though, leaned back against her sink and sipped her coffee.  
Her hair was unruly, not the normal carefully smoothed and pinned or product tamed she labored at, but the natural springy curls and waves. Fingers had been rushed through them to try to calm the wayward curls that peeked out behind her small ears. Her dark eyes shined quietly, kohl smudged and sleepy.  
He wanted to pull her into his arms... No, he wanted to be in her arms.  
'Arms', he frowned self consciously rubbing his slightly warm metallic left arm. He hadn't realized his gaze had fallen on the hand on his artificial arm until her smaller hand topped his.  
He started.  
"I brought some things, in case you popped in again. Their in the hallway linen closet and there's blankets in there too." she said softly.  
Then she looked at his arm and Bucky felt his cheeks fill with blood.  
Birdie leaned her head against his arm, like a cat smoothes itself against something it fancies or wanted to mark. It was cute. "I feel safe here." she murmurs flashing her large dark eyes up at him before springing up on her tippy toes and kissing his still stubbled cheek.  
Bucky watched her go.  
For the first time, Bucky felt safe too.


End file.
